New solutions are emerging at a breakneck pace in today’s digitized age, and like most developers, Pindrop believes technology’s role in our lives is to make things easier. The Atlanta-based company uses voice authentication tech that analyzes over 250 specific human voice characteristics. This lets people use their voices to connect to and unlock secure experiences. For instance, when calling a company’s customer service line to access their personal account information, that person can recite their name rather than having to remember a PIN number.
Pindrop also works to silence fraudulent actors and ensures companies’ customers are met with a seamless experience. With this goal in mind, it’s devoting ample attention to its own customers with a newly appointed chief customer officer. Kieran King most recently held a position at Talkdesk and has more than two decades of experience in the B2B SaaS space managing customer-centric initiatives.
King took on the role as Pindrop’s CCO after being drawn to its mission of using voice to establish a new standard for security, identity and trust, as well as the innovative tech that helps it pursue this goal. King told Built In about her plans to help Pindrop fuel growth through customer success. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
* * *
Why is having a solution like Pindrop critical these days?
According to our recent Voice Intelligence and Security Report, fraudsters passed KBAs [knowledge-based authentication questions] 92 percent of the time, while genuine customers only passed KBAs 46 percent of the time, likely due to the wide availability of passwords on the dark web and social engineering tactics these fraudsters conduct to trick their victims into providing sensitive information. This fact coupled with consumers’ increasing need for seamless login experiences makes it critical that companies — such as financial institutions, insurance companies and more — implement new authentication services to both protect their customers and provide the best customer experience possible.
How will a company’s focus on customer experience help fuel growth?
Fifty-five percent of individuals surveyed have been stressed by a digital identity verification system that didn’t work the way they wanted it to, with Captchas and multi-factor authentication considered the most inconvenient forms of digital identity verification, according to our survey of more than 2,000 U.S.-based consumers. And when those surveyed get locked out of their account because of a forgotten password or incorrectly answered KBAs, nearly 10 percent will reportedly abandon the account or brand entirely, and 14 percent blame the brand for a poor user experience.
Instead, by putting the customer experience at the center of an interaction and login process, companies can better ensure their customers stay loyal to their business and view them as savvy rather than antiquated.
What direction do you plan to take Pindrop on the customer experience front moving forward?
The customer’s voice will always determine the direction of our customer experience. To that end, I am listening for three areas where we can increase business impact, scale insights and ramp convenience. By hearing from customers through our client forum exchange, customer advisory board and business reviews, we have unique opportunities to design next-level client partnerships at Pindrop.
What will it look like to codify the factors behind Pindrop’s customers and then leverage those insights to achieve scale?
This is key. Customers want to partner with an organization that helps educate, advise and elevate their efforts. At Pindrop, we are pioneering new ground with cutting-edge organizations so we have a front-row seat to see what is driving success among the best of the best. Our aim is to ensure that we incorporate that know-how into our methodologies, prescriptions and service models so that all our customers can benefit from them.
How do you plan on increasing product adoption and achieving new levels of organic growth?
As an industry innovator, Pindrop constantly brings new capabilities into our solution portfolio. By partnering closely with the research, product and engineering teams as well as our marketing organization, we’re creating compelling positioning and easy paths for new feature consumption. We are also a multi-threaded provider. By that I mean that we have solutions that fit fraud detection and authentication needs, addressing a wide array of business use cases that support B2B and B2C companies.
